Social mobility,immigration policy, perhaps even education: the government wants universities to serve conflicting aimsHigher education has been transformed: more than half a million students started on a degree course this year. Ten of the 50 best-rated universities in the world are British: a quarter of their income comes from non-EU students. But a fifth of graduates are not in graduate-level employment three years after leaving university, and employers complain that they still struggle to recruit people with the skills and qualifications they need,and the next generation of final-year school students will be looking with dismay at some universities’ student satisfaction ratings while contemplating the burden of leaving university with a debt of at least £27000. And from next September, the grants that supported the poorest students and have done so much to widen access are being replaced with loans.
A valid degree can transform life chances. That is why the government is right to put promoting social mobility at the heart of its latest plans for higher education. It is also in the interests of universities and the wider economy as well as the students themselves to compose sure that every able school leaver gets the chance of a university education that will benefit them. But the green paper it published on Friday risks abandoning these fundamental aims. Its proposals for teacher rankings are frighteningly indistinct, or it completely fails to consider the needs of fraction‑time or mature students.
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Source: theguardian.com